


Fragile Things

by lonelywalker



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: AU, Age Difference, F/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-27
Updated: 2011-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Lundy survives the parking lot shooting. But just as he's out of the hospital, Rita is murdered. Chaos ensues for him and Deb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Things

" _Fuck_."

Frank's been out of the hospital for two days when she gets the call.

It's not so late in the evening, but they're in bed, kissing under the covers like furtive teenagers, fingers tentatively brushing over her scars and his bandages. He's not as fragile as he once had been, lying unconscious in a hospital bed for a week, pale as death, while she held his hand and told every medical professional in the building to go fuck themselves _and_ their prophecies of doom.

He wasn't supposed to survive the parking lot, his blood – more than she'd ever thought possible - staining the ground. If he ever woke up, they told her, trying to usher her back to her own room, there would likely be brain damage. Mobility problems. Memory loss.

On the seventh day, Frank had squeezed her hand and, when she tearfully told him all of this, grinned just as broadly as he had the night they'd made fierce, glorious love in his hotel room. "Well, fuck that," he'd said.

He's still sore, rows of stitches in his chest and back, but he can walk, and eat, and completely disapprove of Dexter's kitchen. They have vague plans to buy a place together, with Frank having his belongings transferred here from DC, but for now they're in Dexter's old apartment, and the little things really don't seem to matter.

"I love you," Frank says, clear as a bell by her ear, and her cellphone rings.

She shouldn't answer, but she's a cop, and Frank used to be a Fed, and they both understand that she'll _always_ answer. "Fuck. _What_?"

It's Angel. He's at Dexter's house. Rita's dead.

She freezes up so badly, brain for once not connected to her vocal cords, that Frank has to take the phone from her and talk to Angel himself. By the time they're finished, she's already out of bed, picking up clothes, looking for her keys.

"I'm coming with you."

"The fuck you are. Where the _fuck_ are my..." She snatches them off the dresser.

He pays about as much attention as she would to him in the same situation. "There'll be Feds there. I'm coming with you."

She drives. By the time they reach Dexter's neighborhood, it seems as though every vehicle with a flashing light in the entire city has converged on his street. "Like the fucking fourth of July," she mutters, parks as soon as she can, and tears off to find her brother.

It's a whole tragic fucking mess, even though it seems like the whole of Miami Metro has turned out to support Dexter. Cops _always_ suspect the husband. It's written into their DNA, and Dex – in shock or whatever – stupidly telling them _he_ did it? Well fuck. Frank gets the Bureau guys to back off, but probably only for the night.

The three of them drink Scotch before dawn, tired and numb. Dexter sleeps on the couch, Harrison in his crib. Debra wants to hug Frank so fucking tightly she'd rip out stitches, but she lets him hug her instead as they lie awake thinking, hoping, praying. She had thought she'd lost him once. She can't bear the thought of finding him the way Dex had found Rita, the specter of living her whole life without him…

"I love you too," she whispers, hugging his arm to her chest.

By the next evening, the apartment has turned into a commune: Dex glaring at his laptop screen, Cody sniffling in a corner, Astor locked in the bathroom, and Harrison squealing in Frank's arms. Family. She loves them, but she could scream.

She does math instead.

"Where the _fudge_ are they all going to sleep?" she asks Frank in a whisper as he sets Harrison down.

Frank looks around. "Maybe I should get a hotel room for a while."

"No fu… fudging way." She's pretty sure that, even taking his bullet wounds into account, he's the most functional adult in the building. "And I can't just leave my brother."

"There might be another option." Frank leans against Harrison's crib. She honestly doesn't know how he stays on his feet. Maybe the pain pills help. "All my things are in storage… There's a cot there. I thought my daughter would use it when she comes to visit."

"If she comes here now she'll be sleeping on the floor." But Deb goes to get the key from its hook by the door. "I'll take Dex. No way I'm letting you carry boxes around. And you can change a diaper, right?"

He's about twenty-five years out of practice, but he can. Dexter seems like a zombie as he helps her get the bed, and she doubts he's going to sleep much on the couch. Frank's good with the kids, getting them to eat something and watch cartoons, but he's exhausted by the time she drags him to bed, wincing as he lies down. All she's wanted to do since she got him home is touch him, hold him, have him inside her and make everything all right. But now they're actually wearing _clothes_ to bed.

"Like an old married couple," she whispers to him in the darkness.

He chuckles, kisses her hair. "It's not so bad."

In the morning, though, he's fucking rock hard against the small of her back, and she just turns and kisses him, hand moving urgently to pull down his shorts. He fingers her clit, thrusting through her fingers, their moans and gasps stifled by covers and each other's mouths. And-

And Cody knocks at the door. "Aunt Deb? Mr. Lundy?"

"Oh fuck _me_ ," Deb groans as Frank crashes back into the pillows with a sigh and an amused smile. "What?"

"Astor's been in the bathroom for ages, and I _really_ need to pee!"

Deb pointedly reminds Frank that they are never, ever having kids before stomping out into the living room.

Things get better by inches. They pack up Dexter’s old house, Quinn doing most of the heavy lifting and engaging in some sort of one-sided dick-measuring contest with Frank. Frank leans against the bathroom doorway and stares at the tub until she goes over and runs her hand down his arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“No… But still.”

But still. They’ve had no leads on Trinity – Arthur Mitchell – since Rita’s death. The trail is cold. And even if several details about this last murder seem wrong, badly outside the margins of Frank’s profile, there’s no more evidence to go on. Frank puts away his files, and hopes they won’t need to be brought out of retirement again.

Astor and Cody go to live with their grandparents in Orlando. Dexter is as heartbroken as Deb has ever seen him, but she’s relieved. The three of them put together can barely deal with Harrison.

Dexter goes back to work. Frank stays home and looks after the baby while interrogating potential nanny after potential nanny. He cooks. He reads. He heals.

It’s around six weeks after the phone call that Deb comes home, raids the dresser for one of Frank’s many ties, and slips it over his eyes while he’s just about to start dinner. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re a serial killer too,” he says with a smile, putting down the pan. “That would just be embarrassing.”

Leaving Harrison with the saintly Irish woman Frank had finally selected after about a dozen background checks, they drive across town. Frank doesn’t ask where they’re going. Knowing him, he already knows.

There’s a door, and an elevator, and another door, and then…

“Come here,” she says, tugging his hand, and he blindly follows until she gives him just the slightest push and he trips over onto the bed. _Their_ bed.

Honestly, seeing him lying splayed out against the blankets, with no one else in the entire place? That’s the stuff of her wildest fantasies right there.

Frank nudges up the blindfold, blinking at the white walls. “Is this…?”

“Our new apartment? Fuck yeah. I arranged for our stuff to be moved in Monday. But I bought the bed. Figured we’d need it this weekend.”

“This weekend?” He’s not freaking out, not telling her he hates it or that she should’ve consulted him. He’s just… being Frank. Fucking calm beyond belief.

Deb kicks off her shoes and clambers onto the mattress with him. “This weekend, when we do fuck all but screw.”

“And we eat…?”

“The worst, greasiest, fattiest food we can order with a cellphone.”

After almost watching him die, after Rita’s murder, after weeks of upheaval and noise, all she wants – all she _needs_ \- is him. Alive and warm and for keeps.

“Morgan,” Frank says, pulling down her shirt so he can kiss her, “this just might be the best plan you’ve ever had.”


End file.
